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28Cientificismo metodológicoIn Gabriel Andrade (ed.), Elogio del Cientificismo, Laetoli. pp. 51-74. 2017.El cientificismo (scientisme) se ha convertido actualmente en una lacra o un insulto. Nuestra tendencia espontánea es la de apartarnos para evitar ser insultados. Pero es evidente que el cientificismo es atacado a menudo por confundir el conocimiento científico y su uso tecnológico; entre modo de producción de los conocimientos y conocimientos adquiridos, etc. Si se adopta una definición rigurosa del cientificismo como esta: “El cientificismo es la tesis según la cual la mejor manera de conocer …Read more
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8Aggregation Paradoxes and Non-CommutativityIn Gianluca Manzo (ed.), Theories and Social Mechanisms, The Bardwell Press. pp. 353-371. 2015.In this chapter, I discuss the "common mind thesis" that social integrates have mind of their own – a thesis which is built on a kind of aggregation paradox named doctrinal paradox. External analysis objects its very name: there is no paradox, but non-commutativity of the function composition involved in the aggregation process (Part I). Internal analysis shows that the doctrinal paradox works only when premises are separable. However premises turn out to be hardly separable in the examples cite…Read more
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13DeterminismIn Bryan S. Turner (ed.), The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social Theory, Wiley-blackwell. 2017.Determinism is the thesis that the events comply with laws, i.e. constant relations by which the same causes produce the same effects. There is no consensus over determinism. The first expression of determinism was: "In nature... all movements follow constant and necessary laws... Each molecule acts precisely as it ought to act and cannot act otherwise than it does" (D'Holbach 1770, 51-2). This was the source of Laplace's statement.
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5Lorenzo Ghiberti’s Optical Sources Revisited Through the Tracer MethodIn F. Jonietz, W. D. Löhr & A. Nova (eds.), Ghiberti teorico, Officina Libraria. pp. 89-102. 2019.Most studies on scientific sources are conducted using the text parallels method, which consists in presenting two texts opposite each other in order to establish or exclude a correspondence between a «source text» and a «target text.» We have explained elsewhere the limits of this method, especially when (exact) text parallels turn into (approximate) doctrinal parallels, and when the potential sources are numerous. In this context, the search for sources is doomed to failure. In order to operat…Read more
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16Anthropocène. Technique. Deux points de contact entre science et pensée partisaneZilsel 3 263-277. 2018.Ce texte est une exploration des manifestations de la « pensée partisane » aux marges de la science. La science répondant à une norme d’objectivité et l’objectivité étant incompatible avec l’esprit partisan, repérer la présence d’une pensée partisane en science revient à pointer une contradictio in adjecto. Par suite, les éléments partisans qui auront été identifiés devront être placés à la limite ou au-delà du domaine de la science. L’expression « pensée partisane » se trouvant dans le voisinag…Read more
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9The Anthropocene and technique: Where science meets partisan thinkingZilsel 3 263-277. 2018.This article explores how “partisan thinking” presents itself in the borderlands of science. As science conforms to an objectivity norm, and objectivity is incompatible with the partisan mindset, to discover a latent partisan notion in scientific discourse is to lay bare a contradictio in adjecto. It follows that any partisan elements identified should be placed on the edges of, or even outside, the domain of science. The term “partisan thinking” is a close neighbor to ideology, and so I will br…Read more
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4Jérôme Lamy, Faire de la sociologie historique des sciences et des techniques (review)Revue Philosophique de la France Et de L’Etranger 144 369-371. 2019.N/A
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3Jacques Bouveresse, Le Mythe moderne du progrès (review)Revue Philosophique de la France Et de L’Etranger 142 597-601. 2017.N/A
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15Elaheh Kheirandish, Baghdad and Isfahan. A Dialogue of Two Cities in a Age of Science ca. 750–1750 (review)Early Science and Medicine 28 239-255. 2023.Kheirandish offers us a work that is both universal – for the way in which it embraces the history of science –, and is also very personal in its organization, since the author has chosen to write this history by recounting two decades of a personal research itinerary within the Arab-Persian sciences.
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20Échelles et raisons d’agir dans la conception architecturaleSciences du Design 5 131-144. 2017.Cet article compare les modèles explicatifs en architecturologie et en philosophie analytique de l’action, l’une et l’autre postulant l’existence d’actions finalisées. Cette similitude pose la question de l’identité des échelles de référence et des raisons d’agir. On montre que les échelles sont un sous-ensemble des raisons d’agir. Ce résultat a deux conséquences : 1. Le pouvoir explicatif des raisons d’agir est supérieur à celui des échelles de référence. 2. Raisons d’agir et échelles de référe…Read more
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Collaborative Networks in Particle Physics: A Sociological Inquiry into the ATLAS and CMS CollaborationsSociology of Science and Technology 7 169-193. 2016.The discovery of the Higgs boson is one of the most significant advances of particle physics in recent years. It led to the award of the Nobel Prize in Physics 2013 to Englert and Higgs for the theory explaining the origin of the particle mass. The Nobel Prize cannot conceal the fact that the results about the new particle have been achieved by the experimental physicists of the ATLAS and CMS collaborations, who are among the largest international collaboration of scientists in the world (2898 a…Read more
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6Signature scientifique et collaborations internationales: l’inflation du nombre de coauteurs en physique des particulesSocial Science Information 56 (1): 142-167. 2016.L’article étudie l’inflation du nombre de coauteurs qui touche aujourd’hui plusieurs disciplines comme la physique des particules et les sciences biomédicales. Approfondissant l’exemple des collaborations ATLAS et CMS du CERN qui ont découvert expérimentalement le boson de Higgs en 2012, l’article précise les modalités de signature dans ce champ, étudie les facteurs responsables de l’inflation du nombre de signataires, se demande si cette inflation a provoqué l’apparition de phénomènes inédits, …Read more
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10Inside the Ghetto. Using a Table of Contingency and Cladistic Methods for Definitional PurposesBulletin of Sociological Methodology 133 5-28. 2017.This article aims at clarifying sociological definitions with the help of an original tool, the logical table of contingency, which has characteristics in common with both the statistical table of contingency and Carroll’s bilateral diagram. The unclear notion of ghetto is taken as a test-case. Successive tables of contingency are applied to various defining properties and various sociohistorical situations. Cladistic methods are then used to make the relationships between all ghetto-like situat…Read more
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5Geometrical and Arithmetical Methods in Early Medieval PerspectivePhysis. Rivista Internazionale di Storia Della Scienza 45 29-55. 2008.This paper examines the hypothesis that early perspective paintings were drawn arithmetically, without vanishing points. The best argument for this hypothesis is that the division of two parallel lines by straight lines intersecting each other at the vanishing point (geometrical method) is equivalent to the division of those parallel lines in proportional parts (arithmetical method). If arithmetical method had been used, then the vanishing points exhibited ex post should be purely fortuitous. Bu…Read more
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14La profession d’architecte à l’épreuve de l’égalitarisme contemporainThe Tocqueville Review 29 127-150. 2008.Why are architects faced with a long-standing crisis of legitimacy in democratic countries, even though going to an architect is required by law in most of these countries ? Design work and project management have now turned into a competitive partnership within an egalitarian trend. The crisis of the architectural profession results from the undermining of architects' powers relative to other actors. This fact clearly evokes a Tocquevillian paradigm : in democratic societies, the passion for eq…Read more
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3La crise invisible des architectes dans les Trente GlorieusesHistoire Urbaine 25 129-147. 2009.French architects professional crisis is often said to result from the impact of two oil crises on the building trade. Several years of prosperity force to change this diagnosis. In spite of recent building records, French architects still claim to exercise a “disaster profession” that can be no more a sign of economic crisis. The two rival hypotheses, economic crisis vs. crisis of legitimacy, are tested during the ‘Trente Glorieuses’ prosperous period. Architects’ testimonies of these years pre…Read more
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16The Experimental Study of Binocular Vision by Ibn al-Haytham and Its Legacy in the WestHistoria Ophthalmologica Internationalis 2 127-152. 2018.Early modern physiological optics introduced the concept of correspondence through the study of the con- ditions for the fusion of binocular images. The formulation of this concept has traditionally been ascribed to Christiaan Huygens (1667) and to an experiment often attributed to Christoph Scheiner (1619). How- ever, Scheiner’s experiment had already been conceptualized, first by Ptolemy (90–168 AD), then by Ibn al-Haytham (d. after 1040). The extent of the latter’s knowledge of the mechanisms…Read more
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15Problèmes inverses, causalité, scientificité. Note sur les problèmes projectifs inversesRevue des Questions Scientifiques 193 353-377. 2023.L’article s’intéresse aux rapports entre problèmes inverses et causalité, et aux procédures concrètes de résolution des problèmes inverses. La comparaison des définitions existantes aboutit à une nouvelle définition des problèmes inverses, intégrative et non causale. De nombreux problèmes inverses étant mal posés, les résoudre implique de les régulariser pour assurer l’existence, l’unicité et la continuité de la solution (en analyse), l’existence et l’unicité (en géométrie). Les procédures concr…Read more
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17Da Vinci’s Codex Atlanticus, fols. 395r and 686r-686v, refers to Leonardo Pisano volgarizzato, not to Giorgio VallaHistoria Mathematica 64 1-18. 2023.This article aims at identifying the sources of fols. 395r and 686r-686v of the Codex Atlanticus. These anonymous folios, inserted in Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks, do not deal with the duplication of the cube proper, nor do they derive from Giorgio Valla’s De expetendis et fugiendis rebus (1501), as has been claimed. They deal specifically with the extraction of the cube root by geometric methods. The analysis of the sources by the tracer method reveals that these fragments are taken from the P…Read more
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16L’Hypothèse d’Oxford. Essai sur les origines de la perspectivePresses universitaires de France. 1998.L'étude de la perspective a longtemps souffert d'un a priori dommageable : celui qui consiste à en faire un système culturel « inventé » à la Renaissance, ou, tout au moins, coupé de ses sources médiévales. Depuis une quinzaine d'années, nombre de recherches se sont attachées à montrer ce que devait la perspective aux connaissances du passé, en postulant tour à tour son origine dans l'optique, l'ars metrica, la statique, la géographie ou l'astronomie... Ce livre montre qu'il n'est pas besoin de …Read more
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182“La obra que usted está examinando es el primer estudio de todas las facetas de la tecnología, desde la concepción del artefacto hasta los problemas filosóficos y jurídicos que suscitan el saber y el hacer tecnológicos… Además, Raynaud califica de tóxica para la propia tecnología a la política utilitarista de dar prioridad al ‘desarrollo’ por sobre la investigación básica, ya que todas las innovaciones tecnológicas han utilizado conocimientos básicos… El utilitarismo que pregonan los economistas…Read more
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18Jean-François Niceron: Curious Perspective, being an English translation of his 1652 Treatise La Perspective Curieuse, with a mathematical and historical commentaryArizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. 2019.To students and practitioners of anamorphic art, the name of Jean-François Niceron is more than preeminent; it has become iconic. La Perspective Curieuse was first published in 1638. An augmented version was then translated into Latin by Mersenne in 1646. A newly amended and augmented version was retranslated into French by Roberval in 1652. This book is an English translation of the 1652 text, with reference to the 1638 and 1646 versions. Considering the continued high reputation of the book, …Read more
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36Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, London, University of London Press, 2023, xiv + 343 pp., 49 halftones, $120.00 (hardback); £90.00, ISBN 978-1-908590-58-9 (Warburg Institute Studies and Texts 8). The late Abdelhamid I. Sabra (1924–2013) devoted a significant part of his work to the critical edition and English translation of the optics of Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan ibn al-Ḥasan ibn al-Haytham…
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22On the Latin Source of the Italian Version of Alhacen's De AspectibusArabic Sciences and Philosophy 30 (1): 139-153. 2020.A comparison of the manuscripts has shown that De li aspecti, the Italian version of Alhacen's De aspectibus, Vat. lat. 4595 (I), was copied from London, British Library, Royal 12 G vii (L). The discovery of long omissions in L, not reproduced in I, disproves this conclusion. The error has two reasons: a sampling too small, the confusion between phenetic and cladistic approaches.
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63Sociologie fondamentale. Etude d'épistémologieEditions Matériologiques. 2021.Ce livre est un livre d’épistémologie de la sociologie. L’objectif est d’appliquer des méthodes analytiques pour clarifier le vocabulaire, expliciter des relations non-apparentes entre concepts, dégager la portée d’une méthode, ou souligner les incohérences d’un programme de recherche. Les questions épineuses ne sont pas écartéees: Comment clarifier des notions confuses? Peut-on mathématiser les concepts sociologiques? Peut-on pratiquer la sociologie comme on pratique les sciences naturelles? Q…Read more
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25Eye Representation and Ocular Terminology from Antiquity to HelmholtzWayenborgh/Kugler. 2020.650 pp. – This book is a continuation of the research on the representation of the eye initiated by Prof. Ludwig Choulant (University of Dresden) and Prof. Hugo Magnus (University of Breslau) at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. The aim of the book is to provide all those who need information on how the eye was conceived in a given historical context, with clear and concise iconographic and lexicographic data. The first section contains about 700 images of the eye (first han…Read more
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25Truth in the Post-Truth EraIn Michael Robert Matthews (ed.), Mario Bunge: A Centenary Festschrift, Springer. pp. 139-162. 2019.Notwithstanding what the champions of post-truth may think, truth remains a key concept of scientific research. In this contribution, several theories of factual truth are evaluated with the help of a simple and straightforward tool, i.e., a logical table of contingency. Its application shows that most contemporary disconcerting theories of truth have critical flaws, and that, albeit imperfect, truth-as-correspondence is still the best theory. Further criticism of correspondence as adaequatio, c…Read more
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41Mathématiques et architecture: le tracé de l’entasis par Nicolas-François BlondelArchive for History of Exact Sciences 74 (5): 445-468. 2020.In Résolution des quatre principaux problèmes d’architecture (1673) then in Cours d’architecture (1683), the architect–mathematician Nicolas-François Blondel addresses one of the most famous architectural problems of all times, that of the reduction in columns (entasis). The interest of the text lies in the variety of subjects that are linked to this issue. (1) The text is a response to the challenge launched by Curabelle in 1664 under the name Étrenne à tous les architectes; (2) Blondel mathema…Read more
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44Andalò di Negro’s De compositione astrolabii: a critical edition with English translation and notesArchive for History of Exact Sciences 73 (6): 551-617. 2019.In this article, we publish the critical edition of Andalò di Negro’s De compositione astrolabii, with English translation and commentary. The mathematician and astronomer Andalò di Negro presumably redacted this treatise on the astrolabe in the 1330s, while residing at the court of King Robert of Naples. The present edition has three purposes: first, to make available a text missing from the previous compilations of works by Andalò di Negro; second, to revise a privately circulated edition of t…Read more
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28Diversity, Simplicity and Selection of Geometric Constructions: The Case of the n-Section of a Straight LineNexus Network Journal 21 405-424. 2019.This article is a study of geometric constructions. We consider, as an illustration, the methods used for dividing the straight line into n equal parts (n-section). Architects and practicioners of classical Europe had at their disposal a broad range of geometric constructions: ancient ones were edited and translated, whereas new solutions were constantly published. The wide variety and reasons for selection of these geometric constructions are puzzling: the most widespread construction was not t…Read more
Dominique Raynaud
Université Grenoble Alpes
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Université Grenoble AlpesRegular Faculty
Grenoble, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France
Areas of Specialization
History of Science |
Philosophy of Science, Misc |